New claims against Prince Andrew of ‘grave concern’ and need examining
Andrew has relinquished his Duke of York title, but there are calls for it to be removed through legislation (Jacob King/PA)
New allegations against Britain's Prince Andrew are of “very serious and grave concern” and should be “examined in the appropriate way”, a Buckingham Palace source has said.
The Metropolitan Police is “actively” looking into claims Andrew passed his sex accuser Virginia Giuffre’s date of birth and social security number to his bodyguard in a bid to dig up dirt for a smear campaign.
It comes amid the publication of Ms Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs in which she wrote that Andrew’s team tried to hire “internet trolls to hassle” her.
In her harrowing book, Nobody’s Girl, she recounted her allegations of an orgy with Andrew and paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and “eight other young girls”.
She also told how she dressed like her idols Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera when she claimed to first meet the prince when she was 17 – wearing the outfit in the famous photo which showed a grinning Andrew with his arm around her waist.
The King’s brother relinquished his Duke of York title on Friday amid intensified focus on his links with Epstein, and on Ms Giuffre’s allegations, which Andrew vehemently denies, that she was forced to have sex with the prince three times after being trafficked by Epstein.
A palace source said action was needed because of “what lies at the heart of this, the broader allegations and the issues highlighted”.
They added that the “new allegations that have been brought up” are of “very serious and grave concern” and “should be examined in the appropriate way”.
Pressure is growing on the royal family to go further by backing a move to formally strip Andrew of his dukedom through parliamentary legislation.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said the question of legislation was “a matter for the palace in the first instance” and that ministers “support the judgment of the King'” regarding Andrew’s titles.
Andrew paid millions to Ms Giuffre to settle a civil sexual assault case in 2022, despite claiming never to have met her.
She wrote how he hid behind “the well-guarded gates” of Balmoral Castle, making it difficult for her lawyers to serve him with papers.
She also said of her legal settlement: “After casting doubt on my credibility for so long – Prince Andrew’s team had even gone so far as to try to hire internet trolls to hassle me — the Duke of York owed me a meaningful apology as well.”
Ms Giuffre added: “We would never get a confession, of course. That’s what settlements are designed to avoid. But we were trying for the next best thing: a general acknowledgment of what I’d been through.”
She described how she took part in two days of mediation, and her lawyer read the duke’s agreed settlement statement at 2.30am Florida time “through tears, both hers and mine”.
She recalled how in March 2001 she dressed in outfits that reminded her of popstars Spears and Aguilera when she said she was first preparing to meet Andrew in Ghislaine Maxwell’s London flat.
She said convicted sex trafficker Maxwell bought her an expensive Burberry purse and three different outfits including “two sexy, sophisticated dresses” to wear.
Ms Giuffre said there was “a third option that I’d lobbied for: a pink V-necked, sleeveless mini T-shirt and a sparkly, multicoloured pair of jeans embroidered with a pattern of interlocking horses”.
“After I showered and dried my hair, I put on the jeans and top, which left a strip of my stomach exposed. Maxwell wasn’t thrilled, but like most teenage girls then, I idolised Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and the third outfit was something I imagined the two of them might wear. I told Maxwell it felt more like ‘me’,” she added.
Maxwell, who “was more coquettish than usual”, asked the then-duke to guess Ms Giuffre’s age, and Andrew, then 41, guessed correctly at 17, Ms Giuffre wrote.
She said she was paid 15,000 dollars for “serving the man the tabloids called ‘Randy Andy'” and that he licked the arches of her feet and “seemed in a rush to have intercourse”.
She also depicted how the death of Diana, Princess of Wales left her scared, amid unproven conspiracy theories the royal family was involved, and she alleged she had sex with Andrew, four years after the princess died, to keep “powerful” people happy while she was in the UK.
“Less than four years earlier, Lady Diana had died in a car accident, prompting some conjecture (never proven) that the royal family had somehow been involved,” she wrote.
She added, referencing her then-boyfriend Tony Figueroa: “Tony and I had no way of knowing if this was true, but we were sure that I was surrounded by people who wielded vastly more clout than I ever would.”
Harrods boss Mohamed al Fayed had claimed Prince Philip “masterminded” the car crash that killed Diana and his son Dodi Al Fayed, but an inquest found their chauffeur Henri Paul was drunk and driving too fast.
Ms Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, wrote an email to her co-writer Amy Wallace at the start of that month shortly after being involved in a car crash that said it was her “heartfelt wish that this work be published, regardless of my circumstances at the time”, and that it was still to be released in the event of her death.
“The content of this book is crucial, as it aims to shed light on the systemic failures that allow the trafficking of vulnerable individuals across borders,” she said in the message.
Andrew’s downfall remains headline news, despite hopes by the King that his disgraced younger brother’s banishment would draw a line under the prince’s links to the long-running Epstein scandal, particularly before the monarch’s historic state visit to the Vatican to meet the Pope this week.
The Mail On Sunday reported that Andrew embarked on a bid to smear Ms Giuffre in 2011.
In documents obtained from disclosures held by the US Congress, he is said to have emailed the late Queen’s then-deputy press secretary Ed Perkins and told him of his request to his protection officer, and also suggested Ms Giuffre had a criminal record.
The prince’s alleged attempt, on which the police officer is not said to have acted, came hours before the newspaper first published the photograph of Andrew with Ms Giuffre.
York Central MP Rachael Maskell has called on Parliament to “act” over removing Andrew’s titles, while the SNP’s leader at Westminster Stephen Flynn said there is “no justification” for the UK Government not to bring forward an Act to do so, saying the British public were “angry and aghast”.
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